The Divergent Association Task challenges you to select ten words that are "as different from each other as possible, in all meanings and uses of the words."
My score was 92.14, "higher than 98.29% of the people who have completed this task"
Unfortunately "membrane" and "parameter" showed some correlation, as did "codex" and "shard" - but "enticement", "glacier", and "bunion" were pretty independent.
Via Neatorama.
"Although in ancient times Britain bore the name of Alba, she was by no means alone in doing so. Tens of scores of place names derived from alb were scattered all the way from the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan to the Atlantic Ocean. A surprising number of these have endured into our times. I had no trouble assembling a list of more than three hundred contemporary place names containing an alb component, and many more are to be found in Asia Minor and in northern Africa...The name was prominent in classical times, when several fullfledged countries bore some version of it. In addition to British Alba, these included the land of the Albii in the Alborz massif of northeastern Iran; Albania Superior and Albania Inferior in the Caucasus and Armenia; Olbia on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea; Alba in Romania; Elbistan in Turkey; the land of the Albicci in Liguria; Alba Longa in Italy; Alba and Albicet in Spain; and, of course, the Albania, which survives to this day in the Balkans.The literal meaning and origin of alb remain obscure but, for reasons which will appear, I conclude it was closely associated with, if not the generic name of, the majority of the indigenes who inhabited Europe, Asia Minor, and probably also North Africa, until they were displaced from their lowland territories by largely Indo-European invasions. Thereafter it continued in use by those who survived in mountainous and other physically difficult regions where they were able to withstand the interlopers from the east.But who were these people who left their name all across Europe and beyond and who have now mostly vanished out of memory?"
We are told that, to the south of Skraeling country, which was Baffin Island and northern Labrador, lay Markland (Woodland), the forested portion of Labrador. South of Markland was Vinland (Grassland) which, most authorities now agree, must have been eastern or northeastern Newfoundland."Next to [Vinland] and a little beyond [behind?] lies Albania, which is Hvitramannaland."Note that Alba/Albania is next to Vinland, not south of it. Translators disagree as to the precise meaning of the qualifier. Some say “a little back from”; others opt for “a little behind”; and still others, “somewhat behind.” Regardless of which one accepts, it is clear that Alba, like Vinland, was in Newfoundland.This is confirmed on a map drawn early in the seventeenth century by Icelander Jon Gudmonson, working from earlier maps which are now lost. Immediately south of the Strait of Belle Isle, Gudmonson depicts a land mass which can only be Newfoundland. It bears the single legend: ALBANIA. Not only does Gudmonson’s map show us where Alba was then believed to lie, it dates his original source to sometime before the twelfth century, after which Albania is generally replaced on Scandinavian maps by Vinland in honour of Leif Erikson’s famous voyage.
Much effort has been expended attempting to cleanse the reputation of the Northmen, or Vikings as they are more usually known. The currently correct image is of rough-hewn, stout-hearted fishermen-farmers, who came west to the British Isles as homesteaders. It is admitted that there were piratical types among them whose deeds do not bear close scrutiny, but we are enjoined not to condemn the whole because of the few. Rather, we are encouraged to admire the Vikings for their pioneering spirit, their derring-do, their feats of seamanship, and their democratic ways.This is not how they were viewed by those they came amongst...The Vikings were primarily warriors and pirates, adventuring boldly on the open seas, looting, killing, feuding and harrying, blood-stained and blood-thirsty, wild heathen men from wild heathen lands. There were also settlers seeking new homes, and traders seeking to exchange fish and furs for wheat, wine and honey, but even those who travelled with peaceable intentions were never averse to gaining their ends by violence...So much has been made of the Vikings’ undoubted appetite for precious metals, gems, and the like that we tend to assume lust for such things was the primary motivation for their pillage of Europe. The truth is that such goods were only icing on the cake. What the Vikings sought, first and foremost, was human booty. As John Marsden puts it in The Fury of the Northmen,"trading in amber, furs and walrus ivory was a prominent feature of Scandinavian expansion . . . but their predominant mercantile activity was slave trading."Scandinavians became so engrossed in this lucrative business that they did not even hesitate to enslave their own kind. Circa 1070 Adam of Bremen described how Sjaellanders of Denmark bought a licence from their king to plunder foreigners but used it instead as a permit to enslave other Danes.And as soon as one catches another, he mercilessly sells him into slavery, either to one of his fellows or to a barbarian.Aesir society was anciently built on slavery and remained heavily dependent on it. As late as 1096 a census of Iceland listed only 4,560 free men in a population of at least six or seven times that number. Prosperous Norse households were seldom served by fewer than a dozen slaves.Slaves not only powered the Scandinavian domestic scene, they were the backbone of foreign trade. The great Swedish trading centre of Birka was far famed for slave markets patronized by buyers from as far afield as Arabia. T
Up to fourteen feet long, superbly muscled, clad in a hide as tough as armour, adult walrus fear nothing in the ocean. Gregarious, and amiable except when roused in defence of kith and kin, they once lived in vast and far-flung tribes in all the northern oceans.
They have been known by many names. Eskimos called them aivalik; Russians called them morse; Scandinavians knew them as hvalross; Englishspeakers have called them sea-cows and sea-horses.By whatever name, walrus have been a major source of wealth for human beings from dim antiquity.One day in the museum of the Arctic and Antarctic Institute in Leningrad, a Siberian archaeologist handed me an intricately carved piece of yellowed bone. What did I think it was?“Ivory?” I hazarded. “Elephant, or maybe mammoth?”“Ivory, da. The hilt of a sword from an excavation in Astrakhan on the old trade route to Persia. But it is neither elephant nor mammoth. It is morse. You must know that for a very long time morse tusks were the main source of ivory in northern Asia and Europe. Sometimes they were worth more than their weight in gold.”He went on to tell me of a Muscovite prince captured by Tartars whose ransom was set at 114 pounds of gold—or an equal weight in walrus tusks. This was no isolated example. From very ancient times until as late as the seventeenth century, walrus ivory was one of civilization’s most sought-after and highly valued luxuries. Compact and portable, the teeth in their natural “ingot” state served as currency or were carved into precious objects—some purely ornamental; some quasi-functional, as sword and dagger pommels; and some religious, including phallic symbols in fertility cults.“The tooth of the morse,” the archaeologist continued, “was white gold from time out of mind. There was nothing: no precious metals, gems, spices, no valuta more sought after. How odd that such hideous monsters should have been the source of such wealth.”Wealth derived from walrus was not limited to ivory. The inch-thick leather made from the hides of old bulls would stop musket balls and offered as much resistance to cutting and thrusting weapons as did bronze. For tens of centuries it was the first choice of shield makers and their warrior customers.
The hide had other uses as well. Split into two or even three layers, it made a superb sheathing for ships’ hulls. A narrow strap, cut spirally from a single hide, could yield a continuous thong as much as two hundred feet in length. When rolled into the “round,” such a thong became rope as flexible and durable as that made from the best vegetable fibres, and it was a good deal stronger. In fact, walrus-hide rope remained the preferred cordage and rigging on some north European and Asian vessels until as late as the sixteenth century.
Although walrus are today restricted almost exclusively to Arctic waters, they were formerly found in Europe south to the Bay of Biscay and, in the western Atlantic, as far to the south as Cape Cod. However, as people became more numerous and more rapacious, and as walrus ivory steadily increased in value, the more southerly herds were exterminated, one by one...
Getting the feel of the job, Poole’s crew [in 1603] killed about four hundred walrus and sailed home with eleven tuns of oil and several casks of tusks. When they returned to Bear Island the following year, they were professionals...
Within eight years of Poole’s first visit to Bear Island, thirty to forty thousand walrus had been butchered, and so few remained as to be not worth hunting.An even worse slaughter took place in New World waters, especially in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where every year more than 100,000 sea cows hauled out on the beaches of the Magdalen Islands alone...
Up to 25,000 walrus were killed each year on the beaches of the Magdalen Islands during the 1700s.
Reposted from 2016 to accompany a recent post on the same subject matter.
"Never pile mulch against the trunks of trees. The dreaded “volcano mulch” so often seen is damaging, Ms. Janoski said, trapping moisture against the bark and inviting pests, disease and decay.Keep mulch about four or five inches away from the trunk. You want to see the root flare — the spot where the base broadens, just above the soil line. A maximum of three or four inches depth, using a medium-textured mulch, is recommended."
